REsources for Living
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One of the most exciting things about growing up is that you can do more and more things by yourself.
Babies are totally dependent on others. (There’s not much that a person who hasn’t yet learned how to locate their hands can do on their own.) But before long babies generally learn to roll themselves over, and sit up, and crawl and walk and run and before you know it they have grown into people who can ride a bike or make their own dinner or get a job.
The process of growing up is the process of gaining skills that allow us to take charge of our own lives, to become independent. And it turns out that our self-esteem, our sense of pride in who we are, comes not from having people tell us all the time how wonderful we are, but rather from proving to ourselves, over and over again, that we can manage to do stuff that seems hard at first. Our ability to handle things, to be independent, is inextricably tied up with our sense of self.
Which might explain something about why there are so many depressed and anxious students at the affluent high school where my wife works. If every detail of your life is managed and structured around someone else’s idea of what you need to do to get ahead, there’s not that much chance to feel like you’ve taken charge of your life, that you are growing in independence as you develop the skills to take your place in the world. If you haven’t had the chance to fail and then start over and figure out how to do it right then you won’t have much trust in your ability to manage on your own.
And we do need to learn to manage on our own. We need to learn how to be complete individuals, capable of deciding for ourselves what we like or don’t like, what we will or will not do, based on our own heart and mind and conscience. Without that kind of independence you aren’t really a grown-up.
But that independence is only half of the equation. Because even as babies, as much as we need to learn and grow, what we need is to be connected. We need to know that we are loved, that we belong, that we can trust the people in our lives to be there for us. And children who are raised in families where they can’t rely on the security of those connections are hurt at least as much as children who are never allowed to risk and fail and choose for themselves.
All of our growing up—which is to say all of our lives—is a process of learning how to be independent at the same time that we learn to be interdependent. Yes, we need to learn how to do things and make choices for ourselves, but we also need to learn the skills of interdependence: connection, caring, compassion and the ability to see how our lives are woven together with all the other beings of the planet.
And it isn’t always obvious from the outside what exactly independence and interdependence look like. A person can be disabled to the extent that they rely on an assistant to eat or get dressed or turn on a light switch, but still be fully independent: committed to their own goals and ideals, risking and growing and learning in the ways that matter to them. A person can be fully interdependent living alone on a mountain, but committed not only to the well-being of the plants and animals around them but also working or praying for the well-being of people they never see.
I want to say that we spend our lives learning to balance independence and interdependence, but that isn’t right. That view implies an equation in which you take away from one so that you can add to the other to get the same sum, like an algebra equation. In reality, we can grow in both independence and interdependence at the same time, acknowledging that becoming most fully ourselves can’t be separated from becoming most fully connected to the people and other beings around us.
When we learn to walk, we almost always take those first steps toward the waiting arms of someone who loves us. When we choose to volunteer at a soup kitchen or plant a tree or lobby congress, we do so because we believe that our lives and our choices can make a difference in the world, that our own little lives matter. Who we are is defined as much by the ways that we are in relationship with those around us as by what we are able to do all by ourselves.
So if you live in the US, happy Independence Day! In fact, happy Personal Independence Day, wherever you might live. And happy Interdependence Day as well, since one doesn’t mean much without the other. How will you celebrate?
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